“It’s not the first time I’ve worn it and it won’t be the last time. I know it’s not flattering but I don’t want you to say, “OMG, YOU LOOK GREAT!” I don’t want you to say, “GOOD FOR YOU!” I want you to know why I’m wearing a dress I have no business wearing.”

My Johnson had taken the picture in a moment of joyful abandon while “one and a half proseccos deep” on a girl’s weekend with my best friend and we were on our way to a nice dinner, she explained.

“I bought this dress for a trip my husband and I took in July. When I tried it on I knew the dress wasn’t made for my 5’2” body, 160lb. body, but I felt great in it. I don’t know why. I just did.

“I’m not known to wear form-fitting clothes. At all. But I wanted it, so I bought it. And I was proud of myself for it.”

“Someone could say that I look pregnant ... Once upon a time I grew two babies in that part sticking out in the front, but I assure you, now it’s just where I keep my cheeseburgers and sauvignon blanc.”Source:Supplied

Admitting that she had always struggled with her weight, she nonetheless opted to post the image while at her heaviest weight outside pregnancy, because she had decided to start being kind to herself, Ms Johnson explained in the post that has been liked more than 22,000 times.

“If you’ve ever struggled with your weight, you know it’s not a physical struggle. It’s about how you see yourself and how you speak to yourself in your mind,” she wrote.

“After 40 years of telling myself I have no business wearing things I want to wear, I’ve decided to change the subject.”

The work-from-home-mum explained that while she made her own schedule and could opt to spend hours at the gym each day, she preferred to focus on raising her family, maintaining a happy marriage and friends and just “keeping my sh** together”.

“I’m not saying I’m giving up. I’ll still try to get healthy, here and there. I’m just taking a break from beating myself up. I’m muting the negative things I say to myself, because as it turns out, I care way more about my own comments than anyone else’s,” Ms Johnson said.

And she urged her thousands of followers to follow in her footsteps and embrace their bodies exactly as they are.

“For 40 years I’ve stood in the mirror and compared how I look to how I THINK I should look. And it’s exhausting. Now, in an ugly world where I have so many other, more important things to worry about, I’m hitting that red decline button when the self-doubt calls start pouring it,” she wrote.

“If I can put on a dress I have no business wearing to go out with my husband or to go to a fancy dinner at a nice restaurant with my best friend because it makes me feel good, you can too. And if I’m putting this picture on my Facebook page for 15,000 people to see, well then you can certainly wear a dress you have no business wearing to a BBQ this weekend ... life’s too short to worry about things you have no business wearing.”